Dashboard BI tools for Pharmaceutical Industry

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The pharmaceutical industry has been focusing much of its energy on producing the next chartbusting drugs.

However, the industry is also facing challenges in terms of the changing regulations, increasing number of declines on drug approvals and the continuing need to develop high value biologics. Refocusing efforts is imperative.

There are existing processes, systems and practices that need to be immediately addressed. Key performance indicators (KPI) using BI tools help corporations identify areas that need continuous development and highlight successes already achieved. This helps pharmaceutical companies grasp their management operations better.

What is KPI?

Simply put, KPI is a measurement of something that is vital in a business’s operations. In the pharmaceutical industry, measurements on drug cost overall trend for a certain drug are examples of KPIs.

What KPIs to Include

Before using dashboard software to view KPIs, it is important that useful KPIs be identified first. Some KPIs are not useful to a certain organization, depending on the operations and the needs of that organization. It is therefore important to have long discussions first before operating a KPI dashboard. Discussions should tackle on:

Assessing the organization’s strategies.

Determining the business drives that have an impact on the execution of strategies.

Identification of long-term and short-term goals.

Determining useful KPIs is one the most important tasks of managers. KPIs based on the organization’s objectives are essential components of an effective and helpful dashboard. What you will see on the dashboard will largely depend on how you specify your KPIs.

An Example

*Customer complaints leveled against a pharmacy.

*Here, the measure is the number of complaints and the reasons for complaints. The metrics are complaints and reasons for complaints.

It is possible to have more than one metrics associated with one KPI. The results gathered after monitoring will be used to check whether these results fall within acceptable limits. Each KPI therefore are assigned both a lower limit and an upper limit.

A List of KPIs for a Pharmaceutical Dashboard

Here is a quick list of KPIs you can include:

Drug Trend – This determines general trends related to dispensing and use of drugs.

Drug Utilization – This provides insights on how efficient the use of medicines is.

Generic Substitution – This is about the utilization of generics.

Generic Dispensing – Measures the changes occurring in the use of generic medicines and the associated savings from such use.

Prescription Cost – This tracks the cost of prescriptions of drugs.

Channel Tracker – It aids in understanding the conversion of channels from the pharmacy to mail order.

Specialty Drug Utilization – This is about oral drugs, specifically injectable and infusible.

Therapeutic Efficacy – Measures the effectiveness of drugs.

Turn-around time (prescription) – It measures the time between the generation of prescription and the delivery of drug.

The Core Tools

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This is the best dashboard software for its price. One good thing we did was to hire their consulting services to build few dashboard prototypes and provide some quick dashboard training.

- Terry Seal, IL

We evaluated Xcelsius and Qlikview and the cost for organization to implement dashboards was quoted over 10,000 USD. For fraction of the above quoted price, we were able to buy the licenses for the web based dashboard software and get some free training. This is truly a dashboard software for small businesses like us.